Communist China is waging a global cyberespionage campaign as menacing as its trade war with America in its drive for military supremacy from the Yellow Sea all around its periphery to the Indian Ocean and beyond.

While hacking hard into American networks in retaliation for Washington’s commitment to defend Taiwan, the independent island democracy’s National Security Bureau reports China is aggressively penetrating its government and society in a bid to undermine its ruling structure and win over Taiwanese citizens.

Taiwan charges that the Chinese, as almost everywhere, are extending their campaign from sabotaging their enemies to gathering intelligence to stealing top-secret industrial data for enterprises madly competing with foreign interests.

“China-nexus adversaries escalated state-sponsored cyber operations by 150 percent last year,” according to the 2025 Global Threat Report posted on the website of a cybersecurity company, CrowdStrike. “Targeted attacks in financial services, media, manufacturing and industrial sectors,” it says, are “soaring up to 300 percent.”

How do they do it? Worldwide, the Chinese are “weaponizing AI-generated deception, exploiting stolen credentials and increasingly executing cross-domain attacks,” the report says. Chinese IT experts “bypass security controls and operate undetected in the shadows.”

Chinese cyberespionage hits hardest at Taiwan, no doubt at the behest of President Xi, who is said to have set 2027 as the deadline for recovering Taiwan for the mainland. The president of the Republic of China, William Lai, is battling influencers and opposition politicians whom he charges are playing into the hands of Beijing. The Republic of China rules the province of Taiwan. The People’s Republic of China rules the mainland.

Most recently, Mr. Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party has expelled an official on the staff of Taiwan’s national security chief who was accused of espionage in violation of the party’s “core values of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.”  His arrest, the Taipei Times says, “adds to a growing list of individuals suspected of spying for Chinese intelligence services while working for senior DPP government officials, which has been in power since 2016.”

More broadly, an FBI report said, “The greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property, and to our economic vitality, is the counterintelligence and economic espionage threat from China.”

The Chinese government, a summary of the report said, “is employing tactics that seek to influence lawmakers and public opinion to achieve policies that are more favorable to China.” The goal is “to become the world’s greatest superpower through predatory lending and business practices, systematic theft of intellectual property, and brazen cyber intrusions.”

China’s strategy in Taiwan is the most prominent specific example of a global pattern that may vary from country to country but serves the same basic purpose. At the heart of the Taiwan case is rivalry between Mr. Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party and the Kuomintang, the “nationalist” party of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who led his defeated forces to Taiwan as Mao’s Red Army was taking over the mainland in 1949.

The KMT has long since discarded its once deadly animosity toward Beijing and now advocates reconciliation in the interests of free trade and happiness. Mr. Lai hinted, cautiously, that he would like to see Taiwan emerge as an independent country. Although he doesn’t outright call for independence, any hint that Taiwan should be free to go its own way is enough to draw cries of rage from Beijing — along with air and sea exercises on Taiwan’s side of the straits that separate the island from the mainland.

Assured of America’s “commitment” to its defense, most recently by Secretary Hegseth, Mr. Lai has called for “new measures to curb Beijing’s infiltration and influence,” according to the Diplomat, a website based at Washington. He “particularly mentioned the military, press, businesspeople, influencers, religious groups, politicians, and entertainers as groups China had sought to co-opt or recruit.”

Alarmingly, a report issued by Taiwan’s National Security Bureau says prosecutions “in conspiracy cases have increased significantly in recent years.” The Chinese Communist Party, under its general secretary, Mr. Xi, the report says, uses “multiple channels and methods to infiltrate all walks of life,” including “active-duty soldiers, veterans, gangsters, banks, temples and civic groups” — and “even interferes in Taiwan’s democratic elections.”